The Ontario government is here to help. Again. On Monday, Attorney General Yasir Naqvi announced forthcoming legislation that will address the province’s ostensibly “unfair” market for event tickets. Floor seats for U2 at Rogers Centre being resold for “three or four times” face value, he fumed. Kingston MPP Sophie Kiwala lamented that many of her constituents were denied a chance to see the Tragically Hip’s “moving final farewell,” thanks to beastly people using bots to gobble up tickets and sell them at a profit.

The results of an online public consultation were clear, said Naqvi. “One: the current system clearly is not working for fans; and two: Ontarians expect the government to take action.” We should have expected nothing less: ticket rage is a real thing among concertgoers in particular — a mind-boggling 35,000 people completed the online consultation — and besides, the survey didn’t include an option to suggest the government do nothing.

Among other things, Naqvi said, it will be illegal to resell tickets for more than 150 per cent of face value, and it will be illegal to use bots. Soon, he promised, “everyone (will have) a fair shot at getting the tickets they want.” Ontario, he said, will become “a world leader in ticket sales regulation.”

You’re supposed to think that’s both plausible and desirable. You should instead be very, very skeptical. So long as U2, the Tragically Hip and other artists insist on pricing their tickets vastly below what people are willing to pay for them, there will be an enormous incentive to circumvent whatever laws are in place to prevent third parties from reaping those foregone profits. A 150-per-cent cap would reduce the incentive, as Naqvi says — but only if the entire scalping community decided to respect it.

It won’t. It doesn’t. Scalping is illegal in Arkansas. Tickets for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks’ Nov. 24 game against Missouri are going on Stubhub for well over twice face value. Scalping is illegal in Quebec. Stubhub will put you in the third row for Bob Dylan’s show at the Montreal Jazz Festival next month for US$275; face value is $137.50 Canadian. The experiment works in every scalping-restrictive North American jurisdiction I tried. Heck, scalping used to be illegal in Ontario. That sure didn’t deter the gentlemen who prowled around outside Maple Leaf Gardens and SkyDome.

Many Stubhub users aren’t even in Ontario — that’s even more true for the people with the bots. Is the Attorney General really going to prosecute people for the crime of selling tickets at prices people are perfectly willing to pay? People in other countries? That would get awfully old in an awful hurry.

This is part of a recent pattern with the Liberals — a sort of escalating war on the free market. Relatively well-to-do young people kept whingeing about rent hikes in their fancy condos, so the Liberals slapped rent control on all units built after 1991. This reduces the incentives to build new rental units, and right in the middle of a housing crisis, but never mind. They committed to a steep minimum wage hike — 32 per cent by 2019 — despite warnings from their own Minimum Wage Advisory Panel of potential unintended consequences: namely, “an adverse effect on employment.” Citing Canadian research, the panel warned the potential adverse effects are especially true in the case of a rapid hike. Oh well.

These at least got the Liberals some positive notices at CBC and the Toronto Star. Any victims of the new policies will be harder to identify than the victims of the old policies. But I suspect this scalping law will very quickly be exposed as yet another Liberal wild-goose chase. I hardly see a problem here worth solving in the first place — people are willingly paying to be entertained at market prices — but there are far more compelling solutions on offer than legislation. Ticketmaster already offers “credit card entry”: you have to show the card used to purchase the tickets to get in. At the extreme end, there could simply be names on non-transferrable tickets; no ID, no show. (More humane sellers could offer refunds.) If you want a cure for ticket rage, bother the tour managers and ticket sellers. Leave the Attorney General alone.